Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Chris and Fred discuss the naked mole rat … an animal that doesn’t appear to age at all! Ever! And they are ugly …
Want to know why we are talking about these animals and what that has to do reliability? Listen to this podcast!
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Chris and Fred discuss one of the challenges of allocating reliability … in response to a question from one of our listeners. Might you be able to learn something as well!
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First thing … the MTBF is not a reliability metric (other webinars explain why!) But there are many times when (for reasons good and bad) we need to test something to see how often it fails. This can help us determine how many spare parts we need, how many maintainers and technicians we need to employ, and many other really useful (typically logistic) considerations. We sometimes also need to be able to work out if a product meets an MTBF requirement. But when we do … we need to take into all sorts of statistical considerations like producer’s risk, consumer’s risk, and discrimination ratio. Shouldn’t the requirement be the requirement? If you want to learn more about MTBF testing and how it might (or might not) work … then join us for this webinar.
Chris and Fred discuss if it is possible to change any organization? Which is a topical issue for reliability engineers who feel that no one takes it seriously.
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Chris and Fred discuss how much a reliability engineer (potentially like you) … is worth. Want to know?
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Chris and Fred discuss the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) … A US Department of Defense vehicle that can perhaps teach us a lot about reliability (especially in the field of military and defense).
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Chris and Fred discuss what should a reliability engineer ‘do’? Isn’t this obvious? … is it?
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Everyone ‘knows’ why we do reliability engineering … right? Customer experience. Organization reputation. Reduced warranty claims ten years from now. But these are boring reasons that really don’t motivate me to take reliability seriously now. Why should I invest so much time into an activity that benefits the ‘company’ or the ‘customer’ in the future but won’t make an immediate difference when my boss gives me a ‘gold star’ on my next performance appraisal? Besides, no one person is responsible for reliability, so any effort I invest in reliability will be ‘lost in the noise’ anyway. And, of course, reliability will increase the budget and schedule today. Right? [Read more…]
Chris and Fred discuss the similarities between reliability engineering and good marketing is. Why? … we have to try and convince lots of skeptics.
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Chris and Fred discussing the proper use of the equation often used to determine acceleration factors for accelerated temperature and humidity testing.
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Chris and Fred discussing a listener’s questions on how to convert a failure rate to a distribution.
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Chris and Fred discuss the many and varied different software package that can help you do ‘reliability stuff’ … and how we usually assume everything they do is ‘OK.’ But how do we know the software is giving us the numbers we need?
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Chris and Fred discuss an ALT or Accelerate Life Test Design Question. We love these podcasts … as we are directly answering a question from one of our listeners. Interested in hearing a response to a real-world question from a listener?
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What is supportability? Is it working out how many spare parts you will need (and when)? No. Is it working out how many maintainers or technicians you will need to keep your system working? Still no. What about working out what tools these maintainers or technicians need? No again. But many people think that this is what ‘supportability’ is. ‘Supportability’ is actually a characteristic of your product or system. Is the ‘ability’ for it to be ‘supported.’ And this can mean different things in different scenarios. It is also not a ‘number.’ If you have two comparable systems, but one needs fewer spare parts, is easier to maintain, needs fewer tools, has lots of sensors that give plenty of warning for maintenance, and so on … then it might be more supportable. But the main thing you need to ‘think about’ regarding supportability is that because it is a characteristic of a product or system … it has to be baked INTO the design. Want to learn more about how to do this? Join us for this webinar.
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Chris and Fred discuss the importance of understanding value when you make decisions. And value needs to mean something to you and your organization. Not something in a dictionary.
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